I have left many times - left places I've made a footprint, a home, a community. In the 60's I left Louisiana behind for school in Texas In the early 70s I quit a husband and a perfectly good job and went to North Africa. In the late 70's I left an administrative job and went sailing for a year with a new husband. In the 90s I quite another husband and ushered myself and two sons into a new history. When the nest emptied, it was a soul-bending experience and I felt the need to recalibrate and moved to what the locals call West-by-God-Virginia, but I just couldn't turn it into Austin - so I came back. When I grow up, maybe I'll settle down...
Austin has always felt the most like home, the familiar, the place closest to my heart and way of being in the world - the place that always pulls me back. But each departure has been a lateral move, simply moving my belongings, account, utilities, business and passions to another place. This one is altogether different - not a transfer of things - but a release of many of the externals that have identified me. This is a total jettison of the trappings, taking just the essentials and who ever I am at the core - without the identifiers of business, friends, clothes, make-up, hairdryers, electricity, running water - to see how I can contribute to a larger world and a larger me.
It's three weeks and counting: still not knowing whether the house will sell or lease or how to bridge the gap between this stage and the next - operating on total trust, the goodness of friends and the universe at large and the belief and experience that life evolves in divine order. Fortunately, we don't always know what this is - so part of the adventure is discovering it along the way.
If you'd like to join me on this quest, come on along. I'll post when I can, answer e-mails when I have the luxury of a connection and have a cell phone at some point in the future. It may - or may not - work. But I'm not on the moon - just gone-ta Uganda!
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